Maximum Bath Rock

I'm not exactly the warm and fuzzy type.  Come to think of it, I'm kind of a pig.  I like wrestling, and cheap draft beer, and late night phone sex informercials, and I always order the biggest hamburger on the menu.  I'm not crazy about guns, but I'd have no moral qualms beating a home invader to death with a baseball bat and burying his intruding ass in the backyard.  On more than one occasion, I've embarrassed my girlfriend by getting shitfaced in front of her colleagues on said colleagues' liquor, and then barfing all over her Volkswagen on the drive home.  I detest hippies, and think that any public protest that doesn't end with bankers and politicians being strung up in the town square with their testicles in their mouths or, at the very least, with someone hurling a cinder block through a Starbucks window is, frankly, kind of gay.

Having said all this, I'm not altogether out of touch with my inner metrosexual.  I use a deep moisturizing lotion to offset the effects of aging.  I trim my pubes.  I wear a spicy, musky vanilla cologne to cover up the smell of cigarettes.  And I love a good bubble bath.  After a hard day of posting gay porn on fundamentalist Christians' MySpace pages, sometimes I just want to light some candles, pour myself a glass of moderately priced Merlot, and slip into a hot, steamy, satsuma-scented suds bucket.  At times like these, Slayer or Captain Beefheart just won't do.

Me needs a little Bath-Rock to take the pain away.

Anyways, here's some suggestions.  Rub-a-dub-dub, bitches!

Leonard Cohen: The Best of Leonard Cohen.

L. Cohen is the dad we all wished we'd had.  Wizened, but empathetic.  Strong, yet soft - like a world-weary Jewish muppet with a flair for poetry.  Cohen's probably fucked more women than Paul Stanley, but unlike the starchild, he loved every last one of them.  A word of warning: this shit is super soporific.  Don't nod off and drown, kids.

 Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago.

This album snuggles up against you like a groggy lover, but never pokes its dick into your bum cheek.  Justin Vernon's falsetto is actually soothing rather than irritating, even as he croons mournfully of love lost.  Perfect for Sunday morning hangovers.    

 
Frank Sinatra & Tom Jobim: Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim

Besides Miles Davis, Sinatra is the coolest man who ever lived but, unlike Miles, he never threw his women down the stairs.  This selection of Jobim's bossa nova classics captures the master in deliciously melancholy mood.  Best served before bedtime.  

Caetano Veloso: A Little More Blue.

Caetano in exile.  He huddles on the cover beneath a pale blue Nordic sky, looking cold, and miserable, and fifty degrees Farendheit from home.  This is his attempt to seek solace through sadness, solitude, and song.  Highly recommended when you need a good cry.


Marvin Gaye: What's Goin' On

This one's for the ladies.  Particularly for those of you for whom tub-time is rub-time.  Lean back, part those soapy thighs, and let Marvin take you on a magic carpet ride to a land where no man's idea of foreplay is spit, and they always know where your clit is.